Passenger train derailment kills at least 77 people in Spain

A passenger train derailed Wednesday night on a curvy stretch of track in northwestern Spain, killing at least 78 people caught inside toppled cars and injuring more than 100 in the country’s worst rail accident in decades, officials said.

Officials gave differing death tolls in the immediate aftermath of the crash just outside Santiago de Compostela, on the eve of the city’s annual religious festival that attracts tens of thousands of Christian pilgrims from around the world.

A spokeswoman for Galicia’s Supreme Court told Reuters that at least 77 people died — 73 at the site of the accident and four in hospital — when the train derailed.

Bodies were covered in blankets next to the tracks and rescue workers tried to get trapped people out of the train’s cars, with smoke billowing from some of the wreckage. Some passengers were pulled out of broken windows, and…